


A Connotation of Infinity

by galfridian



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Outer Space, Space Tourism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 07:37:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10531884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galfridian/pseuds/galfridian
Summary: Following her brother's death, Leonie Morrow begins a journey across the stars.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quillori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillori/gifts).



> I tried my hand at a few approaches to this exchange, but this is the story that I kept coming back to. I hope you find in it that sense of wonder and endless possibility.

Oscar hadn't described this. His journal began with Venus: a hurried drawing of its Cloud Cities, followed by a romantic chronicling of the architecture. Perhaps Oscar saw Venus as the beginning of the Tour; all of the _Herminia's_ passengers seemed to share this opinion, save for Leonie. Or maybe, like her, he couldn't find the words for it. Leonie could only speculate.

A sigh of air, accompanied by a duet of clicks, signaled the beginning of the filtration cycle… and the passing of another hour. Beneath her feet, the _Herminia_ hummed with life. 

Strange how much she'd forgotten. Leonie and Oscar had celebrated their eighth birthday aboard the space station they called home. Old enough, Leonie believed, that she could remember it all. She was wrong. Nothing on spacecrafts rested. The _Herminia_ ran quieter than the station had, but silence was a thing you couldn't find—didn't want to find—here.

Below, Earth shone, beautiful against the stark black of space. Its blues and greens meant life and origin. Leonie couldn't imagine seeing it and feeling nothing. Even now, as exhaustion wore at her, she found it difficult to walk away.

Leonie held Oscar's journal to her chest. She pictured him there on the _Herminia's_ observation deck, sitting cross-legged and hunched over the journal. The Ellis Foundation provided journals as part of the Tour package—white, flimsy things—but Oscar had opted instead for a thin moleskine.

The door behind her slid open. She didn't need to wonder who'd joined her. A self-diagnosed insomniac and thorn in Leonie's side, Esai Ellis hadn't missed an opportunity to irritate her since he arrived on Earth. "Still here, Morrow?" He joined her at the window but thankfully kept his distance.

" _Leonie._ "

"Yeah, yeah, _Leonie_. Sorry." Leonie got the impression—as always—that he was not sorry. She reminded herself that Esai was Oscar's best friend. He used to call Oscar by their surname, too. "I still say this—" He gestured to her and their view. "—deserved more fanfare. It's been, what, twenty-three years?"

"Twenty-two," Leonie corrected, "and it got exactly the fanfare I wanted it to have."

"Which was none."

"Remind me again why you're here?"

"I told you, Morrow: You're going my way."

"The _Herminia_ wasn't your first or best opportunity to hitch a ride home. Especially not with your name, _Ellis_." Esai shrugged. "Look, I'm… I'm not Oscar. So if you're expecting to find something of him in me, you're wasting your time."

Leonie stared down at Earth, swallowing the homesickness building in her heart, and willed herself not to look at Esai as he walked away. She understood why he and Oscar got along so well—like Oscar, Esai possessed an adventurous nature and lacked the ability to stay still—but in the decade the Morrow twins had known Esai, Leonie only resented him. Now, he was all she had left of her brother. 

Esai paused at the door. "You should try to sleep, Leonie. We'll reach the Cities by midmorning."

Leonie lingered a little longer. Earth became a marble. In California, the sun would be rising over her empty bed. Finally, worn thin by exhaustion and grief, she made her way to her room.

***

_Airships docked with the_ Herminia _to taxi us to the Cities. As we approached the hangar, the airship grew eerily quiet. We've all seen the Cloud Cities before (in everything from magazines to movie), but it's true what they say: You have to see the Cities in person to really appreciate them._

_Most of the passengers on the airship I took… well, they hadn't left Earth's atmosphere until last night. This Tour begins with Venus for a reason. The Cities boast of our advancement as a species. We take inhospitable (sometimes, outright hostile) places and make them ours. Of course, the Cities are also beautiful._

_Leonie would love them. I think she grew disillusioned with space because it failed to live up to mom's old sci-fi novels. From the outside, the Cloud Cities look like the designer pulled them straight from the pages of one of those books. I just need to convince her to take a vacation from the oceans to remember the stars._

***

Leonie and Esai boarded an airship the following afternoon. Much of that morning, she observed a little corner of the Cities from the single window in her room. Oscar tended to get poetic when speaking—or writing—about space, but he wasn't prone to exaggeration. If the Cities were spectacular, Leonie wanted her first view of them to be from the airship.

Still, she liked the snapshot of the Cloud Cities that her window offered. The people might have been milling about any city: citizens hurrying through the morning routines and tourists wandering from attraction to attraction.

It was with some reluctance that she left the sanctuary of her room to catch the airship.

That reluctance faded the moment she saw the Cloud Cities. Oscar hadn't exaggerated. If anything, he undersold the Cities.

The Cities rested against the clouds like a crown. Function and sustainability determined much of the design, but vanity certainly had its say. The base of each city—which housed most of both its people and its tech—came to sharp points and displayed intricate carvings. Atop each of the Cities, atriums served observatories and greenhouses.

Retractable passageways joined the five Cities to one another: curved corridors connected each of the outer Cities; straight spokes connected the outer Cities to the inner one. Should one City fail, the others could disengage, saving the remaining Cities. Where possible, emerald and rose gold accented the angles and points of the Cities.

Human engineering and practicality kept the Cloud Cities afloat, but Oscar was right: They truly belonged in the pages of classic science fiction. Nothing about their exterior would suit Earth.

"Incredible, aren't they? You're right—I could have taken a shorter route home. But I take the Tour route when I can, because of _this_." Esai's eyes never left the Cities, but something in his tone drew Leonie's attention to him. How many times had he seen this sight? Could he even tell her? But he spoke about the Cities as though seeing them for the first time.

Over the years, Leonie hadn't thought much about who Esai was outside of his relationship with Oscar, and when she did, it'd only been about his family's mountainous wealth. Sometime in their adulthood, her brother became a stranger to her. Blaming carefree Esai was easier than trying to understand Oscar.

Leonie studied him. He seemed to have forgotten he even spoke to her, he was so mesmerized by the Cities. She wanted to hate him. Hating him was familiar. Hating Esai almost let her forget that they buried Oscar less than a week ago.

But they had. In a cemetery on a hillside overlooking the ocean, beside a plot reserved for Leonie, she and Esai said goodbye to the person who connected their two lives. After the Tour, she would return to Earth and studying the ocean; Esai would stay on the settlement in the Kepler system until something else caught his eye. Their lives never needed to cross again.

A memory stirred, buried beneath years of jealousy and hurt: _Oscar, home for spring break, telling their family about his new roommate. "You'll like him, Leonie. His sci-fi collection puts mom's to shame." On the wall behind him hung a framed TIME magazine featuring Leonie and Oscar as newborns: the first children born in space._

Her resentment had begun to feel hollow. Now, with no one to bind them, Leonie wondered if they could be friends. However much she failed to understand her brother, she loved him. If Oscar found a kindred spirit in Esai, could she find some of her brother in him? Was there anything left of her brother for Esai to find in her?

The airship began its descent into the hangar. When the doors opened, Esai's reverie would burst. This moment of clarity, along with her first microscopic glimpse if the Esai who existed beyond Oscar, would go with it. She hesitated. And then: "I seem to remember you bragging that you knew all the best spots on the Tour." Esai tilted his head, just slightly, to catch her eye in his peripheral vision. "Think you can back those claims up?"

"Absolutely," Esai said, returning to himself from wherever his mind had wandered.

Beyond the hangar and its airlock, museums and theaters and libraries waited. Long-range telescopes offered glimpses of distant stars. The Cloud Cities aimed to be the cultural heart of the Milky Way, and one day, it might be. Leonie followed Esai off the airship. "Let me guess: Theater first? Oscar's journal describes some more…colorful productions."

"You're struggling to picture me inside a museum, aren't you?"

Despite herself Leonie laughed. She had been. "I doubt it's your area of expertise. But if you want to prove me wrong…"

The doors slid open. The crowd hurried out, drawn to the vendors selling souvenirs along the hangar. "Maybe one day," Esai replied. He grinned, a boyish expression Leonie had come to associate with those reckless enough to settle the Kepler system. "But if you _really_ want to see the Cloud Cities, we won't have time for any museums."

Leonie followed Esai off the airship and into whatever misguided adventures he had planned.

***

Leonie returned to the _Herminia_ bleary-eyed and exhausted, her heavy heart a little lighter. Together, she and Esai had slipped past the tourist traps. Beyond the watchful eyes of tour guides and their _Herminia_ minders, Leonie saw Cities brimming with life. Above, the Cities were order and shine and refinement; but Esai took her below, down and down and down until they were in a crowded neighborhood.

They wandered the streets, stopping to peruse shops, or occasionally to talk with people on the street. To her surprise, some of them seemed to know—and _like_ —Esai. Although the Cities were built only a decade ago, they'd begun to produce their own cuisine, particularly desserts. By the time Esai led her to a packed bar, Leonie was full.

They lingered there for hours, meeting the scientists and engineers and curators who called one of the Cloud Cities home. This bar wasn't the finest the Cities had to offer, Esai told her, but it did have the best crowds and the best booze. If someone recognized Leonie, no one said anything.

Back on the _Herminia_ , Esai had left her with a polite, but warm, goodbye. She appreciated that he didn't press, that he recognized she needed quiet.

Curled up under the blankets, she pulled Oscar's journal from beneath her pillows. She rubbed absently at worn spot on the cover. The rest of the Tour, including the return journey to Earth, would take another six weeks. She pictured herself in those places: Hiking the Valles Marineris on Mars, captivated by the blue sunset; sleeping on Europa, where one wall of her room would be a window to its vast oceans; the stunning auroras on Jupiter. 

As the _Herminia_ passed Neptune, the Ellis Foundation would host a six-course dinner to boast about their ongoing efforts to tame the planet. According to Esai, the dining hall would be filled with elaborate ice sculptures—cities of ice, in honor of the classic science fiction depictions of Neptunian life. Leonie had smiled when he told her, thinking again of the first time she heard the name Esai Ellis. "Is that in your honor?" she'd asked. 

"No," he'd admitted, eyes steady on hers. "In yours—and Oscar's."

She hadn't known what to say.

After Neptune would come the longest leg of their journey, taking them to the two destinations Leonie feared most. First would come Kepler-16b with its twin suns, the planet that drew Oscar to the Tour. When they'd first come to Earth—when whispers followed them wherever they went, when nothing felt like home—their aunt had given them the _Star Wars_ movies. Later, they dreamed about standing together on 16b and watching its twin sunsets.

Oscar had watched those sunsets without her; she would watch them without him.

Finally, they would reach Kepler-186f—a planet without a name and a settlement still finding its purpose. For two years, Oscar called it home. He felt so strongly about it that he hadn't told Leonie and their parents about his diagnosis until he was too weak to travel to Earth. Before they could book passage, they received word he'd passed away. Esai had brought him home.

No, not home—not to Oscar, anyway. And now, Esai was bringing Leonie there.

Leonie opened the journal to its final pages, finding the letter tucked there. Crinkled and soft from a hundred readings, the comfort of the paper in her hand reminded her of the plush octopus she had carried around as a child. _You'll find something to leave at each stop, Nonnie. I know you will. But I wish I could see your face when you see Europa._ Her brother must have been weak when he wrote this letter, but it doesn't show in his handwriting. 

_I remember the day you saw your first aquarium. The way you looked at the animals and the plants… I knew you were excited. At the time, I thought it was just the octopus, shuffling shells around. I couldn't see what you saw. I know, Leonie, that you fell in love with Earth that day; and I know that you love the ocean and all its knowledge so much that you forgot the stars. But I want you to know that I found it: The moment I stepped off that airship onto Kepler-186f, I felt what you must have felt in that aquarium. I was home._

The last sentences Leonie had memorized. She folded the letter and carefully returned it to its home in Oscar's journal. She turned off the bedside light, turning to face her little window. The stars peered back at her. Tonight, she thought she might dream of her first home, of the corridors she and Oscar roamed.

_I understand now: You found the one place in the universe you belonged other than at my side. I hope you know that I hated leaving you— **I hate that I'm leaving you** —and I hope that when Esai drags you on this Tour, that you'll remember we were the first born to the stars. I hope that you'll remember them._


End file.
